


No Doubt in My Mind

by bluesyturtle



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Coming Out, Deadlights (IT), Declarations Of Love, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fix-It, Friendship, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, Love Conquers All, M/M, POV Alternating, Platonic Kissing, Surprise Kissing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-07 19:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesyturtle/pseuds/bluesyturtle
Summary: In the deadlights there are a million other lifetimes, but all Eddie can see is this one here and now. And in this lifetime, he’s gonna have to kill this fucking clown.Because It has Richie.Richie.





	1. The Fiery Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beguile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/gifts).

> This is all for my good friend Beguile, who read along in the Google doc while I made hilarious typos like _damfuckingn_ and kept cheering me on anyway. :')

At first, emptiness. 

Nothing but open space until the light hits him, or until he remembers that he’s looking at it. Light, and cold so piercing it burrows beneath his skin and blood and bone. Light so bright and cold so invasive that all he can register is that he’s numb all over.

Someone else was here, before. Wasn’t there? Someone else?

Like a flash, sudden and corrosive, the rest of it stretches out in every direction around him. The past and the tenuous _now_ and the yawning void of what’s to come all bunched up like a bead of water on a blade of grass. And all around that, a whole forest of maybes and would-bes and never weres and _almosts_, and beyond that forest, a world and worlds and universes he can only just begin to make out past the trees.

But in his own time and in the places that he knows, are faces he recognizes. Not people, not really. Shadows, memories, and wishes, more like.

_Bev,_ he thinks. It was Bev who came here before. She was the one who went into this frozen fire alone.

January embers, wasn’t that how it went?

Richie’s cold all over, and for all the light pouring into him, the things he sees carry so much darkness with them. It’s not even that he sees them, really; seeing is just the best way to describe it. Everything’s got that Old Movie quality to it like it was shot with 35mm film—there’s a word for that, but fuck if he can’t hold down a single thought for more than one goddamn second at a time.

In the places that flash through his head, there are things he didn’t know and things he could never help knowing. Things like a decomposing Adrian Mellon running into him at the park, things like how his face came to be covered in splits and bruises, things like the gaping jaw of a clown tearing into his heart. Things like Don Hagarty screaming after him, starting to wade into the water to go get him.

It’s not something he knew, but it’s a truth he feels and has felt—that loving another person can make a guy brave. Not fearless, never that. Fearless would mean not caring. But brave and running toward the danger anyway, fighting back against terror because what was on the other side of it was infinitely more important.

Maybe Richie’s never been that brave. Or has he? Wasn’t he, last time? When Bill said to turn tail and leave him, all those years ago down in the depths? Didn’t Richie stay and grab a weapon and choose to whale on the monster instead of running?

Impossible to be that goddamn brave, but even more impossible not to be.

_Brave._

_Braver than you think. _

Richie remembers a whole life’s worth of Eddie Kaspbrak then. Remembers seeing him for the first time at school with that fanny pack and his military-grade stopwatch and his big eyes and his white socks. Remembers wood shavings dusting down his hand and a hammock and rolling around in the grass tickling each other and worming out of headlocks. Remembers seeing him again for the first time in twenty years and thinking, _Oh, shit, I feel the same. _

Because there’d never be any other way to feel about Eddie, not really. Not even with years of mistakes and bad choices coming between them.

There’s more. Things that haven’t happened yet, that maybe won’t happen, that he hopes he never has to actually see. Things like a cave in, like a hole in Eddie’s chest that can’t be patched up, like blood falling out of his mouth looking even blacker than it had that day at the house on Niebolt Street, when it was just the clown playing tricks on them. Trying to use Eddie to twist the knife even more in Richie’s heart because love has always been so closely tied with fear for him.

He sees different futures almost like he’s remembering them, too. Remembering? Bearing witness.

Futures where Eddie’s fine, but he still leaves. Goes back to his life without Richie, back to the woman he married. 

Even sees one future where they both live and Eddie’s smiling at him. And Richie’s warm and smiling back, but that almost hurts even more than the ones where he’s heartbroken. 

All of it happens simultaneously. The warmth and the cold and the happiness and the loss. Having Eddie and losing him. Being with him and missing him forever. Feeling the proof of his life right there in his hands and under his mouth, or watching him die.

It’s in one of those times and places when he feels all the life leave Eddie that all the hope bleeds out of Richie, too. Even in the face of what else could have been or still might be, to lose him still cuts deeper and more viciously than any blade. Eddie going, being gone, but saying something with that little wrinkle between his eyebrows. Saying, _It looked so small. _

And again, out of nowhere, the bubble bursts. The shivering bead of water hanging on that blade of grass catches a rift in the pressure of gravity, and when it falls, there’s nothing left.

Not the cold or the lights, just darkness. But gradually, something more.

Something, and pressure, and…

_Eddie. _


	2. The Moving Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie holds the Monster Killer in his hands and heaves it with all his strength, with all the courage he can muster—because that’s what Richie told him.
> 
> _You’re braver than you think,_ he’d said, and that’s a monster killer, too.

Eddie holds the Monster Killer in his hands. 

He’s not unfamiliar with monster killers that begin in the mind. Loudly, brilliantly remembers hurling his aspirator at the floor and shucking his fanny pack of fake meds before the first battle all those years ago. And he remembers, too, the sinking pit of shame in his belly when he went back to reclaim them—because belief powers everyday relics into talismans, into miracle cures. Even when the people who believe in them really know better.

It’s the same with Myra, really. How he needed her to keep him folded neatly into that same tiny lockbox his mother kept him in his whole childhood. The same as his overstuffed suitcase and his keychain hand sanitizer and the medicine cabinet back home brimming over with acetaminophen, antihistimines, ibuprofen, antacids, multivitamins… 

Eddie holds the Monster Killer in his hands. For as much as he couldn’t move, couldn’t _unstick_ his fucking feet when spider-Stan jumped Richie earlier, all he feels now is clarity and certainty. Because yeah, Eddie can kill this monster. Suddenly he _knows_ that he can. Eddie can kill anything if it’s pulling him apart from the inside and he has a tool in his hands designed to take it out.

Could walk right up to the fucker with the painted split face and spritz It with fucking battery acid direct from his aspirator if he wanted to—if it hadn’t burned up in the fire. That’s how ramped up Eddie is to kill this fucking clown.

Fuck.

Because It has Richie. _Richie. _

Eddie holds the Monster Killer in his hands and heaves it with all his strength, with all the courage he can muster—because that’s what Richie told him.

_You’re braver than you think,_ he’d said, and that’s a monster killer, too. 

As soon as the spear leaves his hand he feels his skin break out into goosebumps all over. His mind flashes back to splashing and screaming bloody murder in a hailstorm of rocks, back to that day in the house on Neibolt Street when his arm snapped, back to the nightmare in the pharmacy basement when he couldn’t get his mother free.

He doesn't need to watch the spear land. Doesn't need to see proof of what he's done. He held the Monster Killer in his hands, and now Richie fucking needs him.

His eyes are still gone and glazed over when Eddie’s knees hit the ground beside him. Eddie’s reaching for him, yelling his name. The same litany of _“Come on, Trashmouth”_ falling from his lips over and over. Richie’s lying there with this unseeing emptiness that’s not like him at all plastered over his face—it wasn’t anything like Bev either—and that’s when Eddie remembers.

And shit, there's no time to wonder what'll happen if it doesn't work. No time not to try it even in spite of the noise and chaos and danger at his back.

_Richie,_ he thinks, and kisses him.

His skin is thrumming still from the spear toss. His hands are shaking, and his body feels like one continuous live wire. But all at once, with Richie’s mouth against his, the realization that those things aren't true because of the Monster Killer or because of the monster explodes in Eddie’s mind, complete and unavoidable and impossible to step away from once it’s been seen. 

Eddie’s been full of fear and dread since Mike called him back to Derry, but Richie’s stirring beneath him and that’s so much greater and so much _more_ than the scope of his terror. 

“Richie,” Eddie breathes, clutching his face, kissing him, speaking his name into the slack seam of Richie’s lips like a command. “Richie, Richie, Richie.”

And fuck it. Richie can be pissed at him later. Eddie’s the one who should be pissed—about the germs or about the violation of personal space or about having to save Richie in general.

But the truth is, that’s all bullshit. Eddie’s not pissed about fucking cooties if it saves Richie’s life. And personal space, hell, they used to climb all over each other as kids, and...well, and Richie never used to protest their constant touching or teasing or...whatever the fuck else it might’ve been.

It’s been a matter of seconds with Eddie frantically mashing his mouth onto Richie’s in some inexcusably erroneous parallel of CPR (Eddie _knows_ how to perform CPR correctly, okay? He’s certified and everything.) when Richie sputters and groans. 

“Eds,” he slurs, still foggy and out of it.

—and Eddie should know better. He _does_ know better, but—

But he kisses Richie one more time, and he lets himself make it count. He holds there, breathing raggedly through his nose and squeezing his eyes shut and leaning into it with everything he has. His heart feels fit to burst in his chest and the blood roaring in his ears sings elation and relief and _life_ because Richie’s alive, he’s _safe, _and Eddie made that happen. 

And fuck the clown. Eddie’s had enough of its child-eating, love-destroying bullshit. The extent of its legacy is a mountain of sewage, trash, and murder. It can get fucked for all Eddie cares because Richie’s hand is on Eddie’s unhurt cheek and he’s kissing him back, and nothing else in the whole of the universe can touch them or break the purity of this moment, of the years this spark kindled and burned and smoldered inside them.

Richie melts and opens and presses back up into Eddie all at once, and in that overwarm, spectacular shift, there’s a ripple and a gust of wind tearing around the lee their bodies make against the rest of the world, against this fight to the death they and their friends are currently embroiled in.

Eddie had just about forgotten, actually. He whips his head around, sure there can’t be anything but incredulous indignity on his face, and locks eyes with the clown from across the way. 

It’s doing some twitchy, ghostlike shit with its limbs, and Eddie remembers that, too. Remembers cradling his mangled arm and cringing away from the corkscrew-swaggering clown as it approached him, grinning and drooling and cackling. That swelling, bursting, _enormous_ feeling in Eddie’s chest glows white-hot inside him, and he opens his mouth, already pointing and spitting mad—_furious_—at this Lovecraftian shitbag when Richie scrambles out from under him. He has Eddie’s hand firmly grasped in his own when he takes off down the slope they’re on and into a protected cave the rest of the Losers join them in.

“Y-y-you stopped It,” Bill’s saying, shouting to be heard over the noise a sewer clown makes when having a temper tantrum.

“Eds!” Richie pats down Eddie’s chest and tugs frantically at his shirt. “Eddie!”

“Hey! Hey—”

Eddie stops trying to slap Richie’s hands away when he feels how badly they’re shaking. Richie must be satisfied with whatever he’s seen, though, because he just collapses against Eddie and holds him. He’s crushing him, just about, and shaking.

“Richie. Hey, it’s okay.”

“Richie,” Bev tries. She doesn’t attempt to haul him off Eddie, but she does sooth him with a hand on his back. “Honey, what did you see?”

And of _course_ that’s what happened. Richie was in the deadlights, and he saw something that freaked him the fuck out. Eddie locks eyes with Bev over Richie’s shoulder and waits with the rest of them.

“This place, everything. A kid at the fair…called me handsome.” Richie attempts a laugh, but it sounds more like a wheezing sob. “You’ve got some steep competition there, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Fuck you, Trashmouth,” Eddie says, the collar of Richie’s shirt balled up in his fist and bunched up around his shoulder.

It works. Richie relaxes, if only just a little.

“Richie.” Ben palms the back of Richie’s neck and rubs Eddie’s back just below where Richie’s holding onto him. “Richie, we can’t stay here. We gotta move.”

“No, we gotta kill It,” Richie says, clutching after Eddie one more time before easing back into Bev and Ben’s waiting arms. “And I know how.”

“Is that what you saw?” Mike asks, helping Eddie stand while Bill and Ben hoist Richie to his feet. “That we kill It?”

“That’s one possibility.” Richie winces at the clawed strikes raining down above them. He looks at Eddie, at all of him. His expression goes utterly serious. Behind his cracked glasses his eyes are flinty and determined, looking right into the heart of Eddie. “You told me It was small.”

The weight of that look Richie’s giving him scares the shit out of Eddie. But it makes him feel ten feet tall, too. So he smirks, cocks one eyebrow at Richie, and quips back:

“What, your dick?”

Richie throws his head back and laughs.


	3. A Liar’s Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie kissed Richie in front of all their friends, and Richie kissed him back. They jumped holding hands.
> 
> Is it even a secret anymore? Was it ever?
> 
> The cloying fear-pain-grief that’s been stuck to his teeth and ringing in his ears ever since the deadlights carried him away, goes out of him. His hands finally stop shaking.

They do kill the monster.

By the time they make their escape from the crumbling den and find themselves at the top of the promontory, Richie’s still seeing double. It doesn’t help that his glasses are all fucked up, but that’s not the whole reason and he knows it. That’s not the whole reason Richie can’t make his feet work even when everyone else jumps.

Well, everyone but Eddie.

“What’s wrong, Rich?”

Richie startles. He’d known Eddie was still with him—hasn’t really been able to focus on much else—but he’d sort of forgotten he was in a place where he could be seen back. Where he could be _witnessed._

And what does Eddie see there in Richie’s face with those huge brown eyes of his? Tear tracks running through the dirt caked on his face? The tremor that keeps reverberating at the edge of his mouth, too much like a wobbly bottom lip for comfort?

Richie takes a breath. To do what, he doesn’t know. Crack a joke, maybe. That must be what Eddie expects. It’s what Eddie gave him, down in the lair. Something sweet to distract him from the pinch, from the danger all around them, from their duty.

Richie opens his mouth—

—and pukes.

“Jeez,” Eddie sighs, dodging the projectile vomit that’s stomach acid and little else. “C’mere.”

Eddie walks Richie a few paces away from the splatter of puke in the dirt and grabs his hands. Richie watches, dazed, as Eddie wraps his fingers around Richie’s wrists. Coming to a decision that Richie tries but can’t follow, he decisively plants his thumbs over matching spots on both his wrists and presses down into the tendons there.

“Uh, not that I’m complaining, but your hand-holding technique needs some work, Eds.”

“I’m not holding your hand, jackass,” Eddie snaps, red in the cheeks and ears even beneath a layer of muck and ash. “Ever hear of pressure points? P-6, that’s what these are. Helps with nausea.”

“Oh.” Richie bounces on his heels, careful not to dislodge Eddie’s thumbs. He tries a voice, not quite ready for it yet but wanting to be. “That’s just the thing! I feel better already, old chap!”

Eddie gives him his frowny eyebrow look and starts to pop back, but that’s when they hear their friends calling up after them. Richie squints, listening. They’re so far down that they’re almost out of range, but he hears Bev trying to coax them down and Ben sounding genuinely concerned. Mike’s up next, and he’s careful to enunciate:

_“Send pizza!” _

That gets a snort out of Richie and an eyeroll out of Eddie.

He’s still rubbing circles into Richie’s wrists when he says, “It would get all wet. What would be the point in that?”

“Nah, I get it. I’m starving.”

“You just threw up all over my shoes.”

“I did not. I missed your shoes. Look at those shoes—okay, they’re disgusting—”

“Fuck you, Richie! A house caved in around us! I had to walk through _graywater_.”

“So did I, but look, no puke! I would never puke on you, Eddie, my _love_—”

Eddie lets go of his pressure points and shoves him, not hard, a kittenish kinda push the likes of which he would’ve sneered at when they were kids. That wasn’t like Eddie, ever, to push back halfway. Richie must’ve still looked like shit. He doesn’t feel quite as hollowed out as he had in the house, but it’s like waiting for ice to melt, waiting for that slidy, out-of-step quality to fall from his eyes.

And shit, there’s still a word for that. He can’t think of what it is.

_“And beer!”_ Mike yells up, a good thirty seconds after his first request.

“He’s gonna ask for wings next,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes again. “We’d better say something. Can you jump, or do you wanna go back to the hotel?” 

Richie doesn’t want to go back to the hotel. He doesn’t want to walk away from his friends yet, not before he knows if he’s gonna forget again. But Eddie doesn’t assume any of that just by looking at him. He doesn’t say anything at all to rush Richie toward an answer.

The only real answer, Richie finds, is to turn to the ledge and say, “Let’s fuckin’ jump, Eduardo.”

He wants to grab Eddie’s hand and hold onto him while they fall, but he doesn’t know what any of this means. Doesn’t know how many of those delicate futures with Eddie holding him back are still possible. Can’t guess at how many of them begin with Richie reaching out to him first. 

It wouldn’t be the bravest thing he’s done in the last twenty four hours. It wouldn’t be the bravest thing anyone anywhere ever did for love, but it scares him. It scares him in the deepest, darkest part of himself that he’s never let anyone see, ever.

Richie must hesitate a moment too long on the ledge because Eddie steps up beside him to look over the edge. He waves, big and exaggerated.

Mike again: _“Pizza!” _

“He’s gonna lose his voice for a bit,” Richie giggles, remembering to breathe so that he can laugh.

Eddie steps back and waves for Richie to go with him. They get enough room for a running start, and Richie’s right about to take off when Eddie’s hand closes tight around his own. He turns a bewildered glance his way, but Eddie’s not sticking around to talk about it and being that they’re connected by ten fingers locked together, Richie goes with him right over the edge. They lose each other when they hit the water, but their friends are there and they’re laughing, so Richie doesn’t shake apart the way he thought he might. 

Bev latches onto him in the water, and that’s nice. He loves all these Losers, but Bev has always held a special place in his heart. The two of them had something in common or something they both knew but could never say out loud, and they still do. Richie turns his head to press a kiss to her wet hair and wonders what’s holding him back. He knows what the answer was growing up. Knows why he let it follow him like a bad penny into his adult life.

He knows—and his skin breaks out into goosebumps as he thinks it—why It appeared to him as Adrian Mellon in the park. Why Richie saw him in the deadlights as he really was, ironically sporting that doofy fucking beaver hat that got him killed.

Richie’s throat seizes painfully. He shudders, and feeling it, Bev looks up at him. 

She’s so beautiful and so strong, and he loves her so much but never in _that way_. He doesn’t think it would’ve mattered if he had. Just knows with a sudden, terrifying, and kind of wonderful, freeing certainty that she’s always understood that about him.

“Richie?”

“I, uh…I gotta tell you guys something.”

And if he wasn’t sure a few seconds ago, he’s sure now that Beverly knows, has known, and has always just kept on loving him regardless. The mild shock that flashes over her face and how it immediately gives way to a watery smile, tells him of course she knew. She keeps leaning on him and smiling, beaming in that golden way she’s had about her ever since they were kids.

“What are you two whispering about?” Mike asks, sounding like a gruff sex god from all the shouting he’s done today. He ruffles Richie’s hair, reminding him of the days when they were all small but Mike was the tallest of the bunch. Softer, he asks, “You all right, Rich?”

“Better than your pipes, Mikey.”

He grins, sheepish but only a little, and slings an arm around Richie’s free shoulder, all focus and calm compassion. Says, “I wanted to make you laugh. Could you even hear me?”

“We heard you placing an order like we’re fucking GrubHub or something,” Eddie chimes in from a few off. The bandage on his cheek is hanging in there, but he’s going to need to change it as soon as they get back to the hotel. “Beer I can see, but the pizza would just get soggy and probably attract parasites to us, not to mention the amount of bacteria in this water right now—”

“Never hurt w-w-when we w-were kids,” Bill offers, innocently doing the backstroke in a wide circle around Eddie.

“Yeah, Eddie.” Ben grins, earnest and handsome and as sweet as ever. He pretends to splash at Eddie, which gets them both grinning, and Christ, Richie doesn’t know which one of them to look at. “Besides, it’s better than all that other stuff we were covered in.”

“Oh, yeah, Haystack?”

Eddie does splash Ben, and a bunch of it goes right into Ben’s open mouth. Everybody’s laughing and splashing then, even Eddie. Richie watches him gag in between peals of laughter with something like helpless, unyielding adoration. Fuck, he loves Eddie. Loves him like he’s never loved anybody before, and they were kissing down in the sewers, weren’t they? Eddie kissed Richie in front of all their friends, and Richie kissed him back. They jumped holding hands.

Is it even a secret anymore? Was it ever?

The cloying _fear-pain-grief_ that’s been stuck to his teeth and ringing in his ears ever since the deadlights carried him away, goes out of him. His hands finally stop shaking.

This is good news, actually, because Bev and Mike get in on the water fight right as Richie’s finally starting to thaw the rest of the way. He splashes Bev before she can get him, and once he’s in it, he’s in it. He’s got Bill and Mike trying to dunk him while Ben and Bev are trying to wrestle them off, and they’re laughing, howling into the vivid, sparkling daylight.

And then there’s Eddie, treading water at a safe distance from the roughhousing and looking on in unveiled amusement. Richie squirms out of the clusterfuck and swims over to Eddie, warm in his chest where he feels like he’s been cold for the last thirty years.

Eddie points emphatically at Richie and bobs unsteadily in the water. In his sternest voice, he says, “You better not fucking splash me, Richie.”

Richie slaps his hands out of the water, palms out in a truce. Eddie doesn’t flinch, but his frown does get saltier, and how that’s even possible Richie can’t say. It’s just cute, is what it is. And unfair.

_I feel the same,_ he thinks, feeling warm and light and free when he looks at Eddie’s pinched little frown. Richie wants to kiss him so bad.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Eddie asks him after a little while where Richie’s just been staring at him.

“I’unno, Eds, tell me about it. What’s it doing?”

“You’re just, y’know.” Eddie rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t inch away when Richie wades closer. “You look stupid.”

“Well, shit,” Richie laughs, tingling in his fingertips, his throat, and fucking everywhere. “I don’t wanna alarm you, Eds, but that’s pretty much always been the case.”

“_No,_ like…” Eddie grins and winces, hand coming up to hover over his cheek. “Ow, damn it.”

“We’ll patch you back up at the hotel, okay?” Richie promises, schooling his features into something resembling responsibility, hopefully. He hover hands Eddie’s cheek, too, ghosting his fingers over the patch of skin just above where the tape ends when Eddie doesn’t smack his hand away. “All the gauze and peroxide a guy could want.”

“Thanks.” Eddie makes that face again, the ponderous, conflicted one Richie remembers most from algebra tests and pop quizzes in Mrs. Chamberlain’s English class. “Hey, Rich?”

“Yeah?”

“Um, look, about before?” he says, chewing on his lip for a moment and darting his gaze around Richie at their friends. “You’re not mad, are you?”

Richie’s not, and he’s not afraid either. He thinks that was sort of the point of coming back here and facing the music, facing It. Facing Bowers, Jesus Christ. The list of insane, braggable shit he’s done since returning to Derry is collectively more badass than the entirety of his life or career back in California. This feeling he has in his chest for Eddie fucking Kaspbrak dwarfs everything else. So Richie’s not mad or afraid. He can’t be, when he feels this good.

Alive and happy and awake. Goddamn finally, awake.

“Why would I be mad, Eds?” Richie swims around Eddie in a slow, lazy circle. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you gay means happy?”

“Richie, I—” Eddie freezes, and Richie keeps right on making a slow lap around Eddie.

He makes one full revolution before Eddie goes back to tracking him with wide eyes that look softer, and like they see more than they did only a few moments ago. Richie grins and makes this lap around Eddie a little closer than the last one.

“Your face is doing it again,” Eddie tells him. His brown eyes catch the sun at the same time that his hand catches Richie’s arm to stop him in place. The look on his face stops Richie’s heart in his chest. His voice when he speaks again sounds tight, like it’s squeezed out of him. “What’s wrong, Trashmouth? Can’t see?”

And then he uses his free hand—the one not holding Richie still—to slide two fingers underneath the unbroken lens and pop the glasses clean off Richie’s face. They fall into the water, and Richie blinks, blind, heart pounding in his ears.

“Whoops,” Eddie says, taking a full breath into his lungs before he dunks his head under the water and doesn’t resurface.

Richie blinks a few more times, confused, wondering, and finally thinking, _Fuck it._

Then he dives down, too.

He’s not a bad swimmer, by any means. All he needs to not drown is to remember which way is up, and the bright sunlight trickling down from overhead means he won’t forget. That’s good. It would be stupid to die now, when they’ve had to fight so hard to get here. 

It’s useless to try when he can’t see, but he still looks around. Doesn’t really know why he swam down at all, except it kinda looked like Eddie wanted Richie to follow him. The water is clear and pretty down here—green like Bev’s eyes, especially closer to the surface where the sun’s hitting it. He wouldn’t mind staying under until he needs to surface for breath, that’s how peaceful it is.

Right as he’s thinking he might go back up for air, he feels a hand on his shoulder. He swivels around, can only sort of make out the shape of an Eddie-sized person in front of him. The white square bandage stands out on his tan skin.

He puts Richie’s glasses back on, and then his hands sink from their perch near his ears down to cradle his face. And Richie can only guess at what variation he’s making of the stupid face he gets when he’s in love with Eddie Kaspbrak. Eddie will probably tell him later in between fits of giggles.

It doesn’t matter, though, because now he’s holding Richie’s face in his hands and leaning in close to kiss him. Richie gets his hands in Eddie’s hair, a safe enough distance from his cheek that he won’t risk hurting him. His lungs are burning and his skin is on fire, and he loves Eddie Kaspbrak. He _loves_ him.

He can’t say how much of that rings true for Eddie, yet, but he must be out of breath, too, because he breaks away and leads him back up for air. Richie coughs and inches his fingers beneath his glasses to rub at his eyes. There’s definitely water up his nose, but he feels pretty damn good anyway, in spite of the sharp ache in his throat that comes from inhaling water. Even for all that, he’d do it again, as many times as Eddie lets him.

“Where’d you two disappear to?” Bill asks, and it comes out smooth as whiskey.

Blinking the last of the water from his eyes, Richie spins around to look at their friends. None of them look surprised or scandalized or like they actually need an answer. Richie cuts a glance to Eddie, smiling when Eddie’s only response is to shrug. He raises his arms out of the water like he’s jumping for joy—because he deserves it, damn it. He should’ve done this ages ago.

Kissed Eddie, confessed that he wanted to, celebrated his love instead of locking it up tight like a sickness. He should’ve done all those things and there’s no getting that time back, but he can say it now. So he does.

“Remember when Superman proposed to Lori Lemaris and she turned him down, but then they made out underwater because she’s a mermaid and he can’t drown?”

Bev laughs and looks away, but Richie can see how her smile takes up her whole face. Ben reacts about the same way, beaming and beautiful and boyish. Bill’s jaw drops, and for a quick second Richie thinks it’s in surprise, but then he laughs, too, blue eyes shining bright. Mike yells out a whoop that can’t be good for his voice, but he doesn’t let that stop him. 

They all look really, really happy. It makes Richie wish Stan was here. Stan who probably would’ve rolled his eyes fondly and called them idiots.

Because if they all knew, then Stan definitely did. Stan who was the first to step between them whenever their bickering got to be a little too bitchy and annoying for his taste. And Richie gets it: he never shut up back then and Eddie never sat still, so that usually meant the two of them could just go and go and go and never lose any steam.

Baby Staniel Uris could always be counted on to say exactly what he was thinking. If he was here with them now, Richie just knows he’d say, “It’s about fucking time, you losers.”

Richie looks over at Eddie then, feeling right then how close they were to losing him, too. They haven’t talked about what Richie saw in the deadlights and he doesn’t want to, but maybe it would clarify a few things for Eddie. If nothing else, it would explain why Richie keeps palming the center of his chest and staring at him like he’s precious.

When he manages to tear his gaze away from Eddie, he notices that Bill, Mike, Bev, and Ben have all come in closer, as close to Richie as Eddie is.

“Anyway… what I’m trying to say is that I’m gay. Surprise!”

They close in around him like the softest, sweetest dog pile in the history of ever. Bev and Eddie take up his right side, and Mike and Ben take up his left, which leaves Big Bill last but certainly not least. He comes around behind Richie and tucks his chin over Richie’s head, and holds on. It reminds Richie of Silver, of those summer days long since past when Richie would stand on the back spokes while Bill rode like the wind.

“Holy shit,” Richie says, his voice coming out thicker than he was expecting. He tries to clear his throat, but it comes back heavier the next time he speaks. “I love you guys.”

He feels their arms tightening around him, feels Eddie squeezing his hand into a fist right over Richie’s heart. Bill sighs, and Richie feels it in his hair.

“We love you, Rich,” he says, bending down a bit to say it into Richie’s temple.

And that’s it, that’s all she wrote. Richie breaks.

“Oh, Richie,” Bev whispers, dropping a kiss on his shoulder. “Of course we love you.”

They hold onto him, and Richie lets himself be held. He has a feeling then, though he can’t say where it comes from or why. But he doesn’t think he’ll forget this. Doesn’t think he’ll forget them, not this time.


	4. (You Know that I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie wants to do everything with Eddie. He wants to hold him and fall asleep with his face in Eddie’s hair and kiss him. Anything and everything Eddie wants, too, Richie wants. But first he needs to hear it from Eddie.

Back at the hotel, Richie does like he said he would and changes Eddie’s bandage. He doesn’t need to. Eddie’s perfectly capable of doing it himself. It’s more that Richie can’t stay away from him. They’re not super obvious about it or anything, but he figures, why bother hiding what they used to do so noisily as kids? Why not pull Eddie to him and nuzzle a kiss or two into his hair? It’s not that much different from sharing popsicles or clambering into the same hammock, all knees and elbows.

Richie hasn’t really let himself think about what happens after they leave Derry. His whole life’s been upended and spilled out like a handbag full of someone else’s stuff, and the thought of going back to what he had before without Eddie makes him feel sick.

If Eddie doesn’t want to go back to California with him, Richie can follow him to New York—and what the hell kind of sick irony is that anyway, that they went as far away from each other as the country would allow? He can’t not go where Eddie leads him. Not when he’s wasted so much time already, and not when he just got Eddie back. He’ll follow Eddie to the end of the world if it means he gets to keep him this time.

Well, unless Eddie asks him not to. In that case it’d be pretty hard to justify, to himself or to anyone else. But he hasn’t let himself consider that possibility.

He’s in fresh clothes and so is Eddie when Richie carefully cleans and rebandages the goddamn knife wound in his cheek. They’re in Richie’s bathroom and Eddie’s sat on the toilet with Richie hunched over him, trying not to lean on him or lose his balance. His tongue sticks out the corner of his mouth as he applies the last strip of tape.

“You’re gonna have the sickest scar, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Oh, yeah, great. That’s what people want in a risk analyst. Someone who looks like they got carved open by a serial killer.”

“Well.” Richie steps back from his handiwork before shrugging expansively. “It’s not your fault Henry Bowers busted out of a mental hospital and came after you. Hey,” Richie says, brightening as an idea occurs to him. “When people ask, tell ‘em they should see the other guy.”

Eddie tries very hard to look disturbed at the suggestion and not tickled, but Richie sees right through it. Encouraged by this response, as much as he can tell it’s not what Eddie’s aiming for, Richie runs with it. Crouches in front of where Eddie’s seated on the toilet and spreads his hands.

“Tell ‘em you _pulled the knife out of your face_ and stuck Bowers right in the chest with it. Sic semper homophobes!”

“I don’t think that’s why he went after me, Rich.”

“Uh huh. It’s a mystery why he picked you. And Mike, no idea why you guys were targeted.” Richie taps his chin with a finger. “Everyone knows Henry Bowers was a nice, forward-thinking young man. Definitely not the scummiest of the scumbags.”

“Okay, yeah, you’re right.” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest. “He was an asshole.”

Richie’s been getting intermittent flashes of Adrian Mellon and Don Hagarty ever since he came out of the deadlights, and it’s stronger now. Maybe he’s sick and twisted for being glad that he killed someone, but Henry fucking Bowers? Henry Bowers who used to say the same kind of shit that he said to Richie, to Eddie? Henry Bowers who almost took Eddie from him and who would’ve done the same to Mike if Richie hadn’t stopped him? 

“It’s a hell of a story, Eds. I bet I could do it justice if you let me.”

“What, you mean you’re gonna start writing your own material?” Eddie asks in a snooty, skeptical voice that gives Richie butterflies because the smile touching his eyes is anything but snooty or skeptical. “You’re gonna give people whiplash if you go from shitty masturbation jokes to: _One time I killed a guy_.”

“Eh, I’ll say you softened him up for me. Like a one-two punch.” Richie mimes a boxer’s stance and adds, while he’s pretending to swing at Eddie’s knees, “Eddie Kaspbrak, one; Richie Tozier, one. Henry Bowers, zilch.” 

“That makes it sound like you were there when he came after me,” Eddie counters archly, one dark eyebrow climbing up towards his hairline.

“Ouch.” Richie frowns and doesn’t have to try that hard to make it a convincing one. “I ever, uh, apologize for that?”

“No, but why would you?” Eddie tilts his head. “It’s not like we were planning on leaving together that time. Everything got all fucked up after we went our separate ways.”

“Whose bright idea was that?” Richie grumbles, pretty much just to grumble.

They should’ve never split up at all. Not when Eddie broke his arm, not to find their bullshit tokens, not any of the times they were in the house on Niebolt Street. And they definitely shouldn’t have split up at the end when they all scattered and fucked off to live their own lives. It should’ve been the Losers against the world, how it always was.

“You should’ve just come to the pharmacy with me,” Eddie says, poking fussily at his bandage. “Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten puked on.”

“Oh, yeah,” Richie says, snapping his fingers. “Someone _did_ puke on you.”

“Shut up, Richie.”

Richie grins, planting his elbows on his knees and staring up at Eddie. It’s not often that he gets to look up at him, and Richie’s surprised—or maybe not—to realize that he likes it. Eddie’s always had a habit of nonchalantly looking down his nose at people, and not necessarily to be mean. Just matter-of-factly. Like he had the measure of something from the moment he laid eyes on it, and like he knew right away when he liked someone or when he didn’t.

That’s how he was with bullies, whether it was Bowers and his gang of shitheads or if it was some grownup who should’ve had better things to do with their time than terrorize kids. Eddie would glare down his nose at them, and if he had to look up to do it, God help them, because it only made him that much more of a savage. Richie loved that about him. He still does.

He feels that word he’s been looking for creep in at the edge of his vision again, looking up at Eddie with the dwindling light of the late afternoon streaming in through the opened window. Eddie looks like a dream, and Richie still can’t believe he gets to have this. He can’t believe it.

Smiling a small, private smile that Richie hasn’t seen from him much lately, Eddie murmurs, “You keep making that face, Tozier.”

“You wanna know what I’m thinking?” Richie hums, emboldened by his confession at the quarry and by the memory of Eddie’s hand over his heart. “I’ll tell ya. One time offer, Spaghetti Man.”

“Oh, yeah?” Eddie sways a little closer. His dark eyes have no nonsense in them, and Richie appreciates the courage it must take for someone as serious as Eddie to look at someone as silly as Richie quite like that. “Spill then.”

“Uh-uh.” Richie wags a finger at Eddie. “Quid pro quo.”

“I’m thinking you’re full of shit, Richie,” but it’s said without heat and with far too much hope shining behind those big brown eyes that Richie wants to stare into forever.

“Okay, I deserve that.”

Eddie laughs, ducking his head so that his forehead bumps Richie’s shoulder. Richie makes a slow grab for the back of Eddie’s head, right where he’d held him when they were underwater. He swallows around air and his mouth abruptly goes dry.

“Truth is…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I’m…”

_“Yeah?” _

“Jesus, I’m getting there,” Richie says in between giggles.

He scrunches Eddie’s hair in his fingers, breathing in the clean smell of him that reminds him of walking outside on the first bracing day of fall. It gives him strength, a bit, to fill his lungs with what Eddie smells like now, when he remembers he used to smell like freshly cut grass and soap and peppermint. He likes the way Eddie smells now, and that’s weird, right? Isn’t it? 

Maybe, yeah, but it makes him feel a special kind of good that he wants to feed until the hissing, spitting mess of it combusts into a bonfire. 

“The truth is I’m crazy about you,” he whispers, lips brushing the shell of Eddie’s ear.

And fuck, he shouldn’t do that. Not when he knows what Eddie’s reality looks like right now. Not when they both know that several big things need to happen in their lives before they can have this and enjoy it the way he’s fairly certain they both really want to.

Eddie shivers against him, _above_ him, and fuck, that’s something Richie wants to revisit. That’s something he wants to chase and study and _learn_ so he can make it happen again.

Richie should pull away. He should, but he keeps his lips right there at Eddie’s ear.

“I always was.”

This time Eddie shudders, and does pull away. His face is _red_, red, and he looks down at his lap instead of at Richie. Maybe he expects to be interrupted, or for Richie to touch him or crack a joke. But Richie waits. He sits back on his heels and watches the gradual shift from caution to wonder in Eddie’s eyes. 

Richie wants to do everything with Eddie. He wants to hold him and fall asleep with his face in Eddie’s hair and kiss him. Anything and everything Eddie wants, too, Richie wants. But first he needs to hear it from Eddie.

“Truth?” Eddie asks finally, shrinking away like he’s afraid to say it out loud.

Ignoring the flip in his stomach that that old fear brings, Richie nods once.

“I’m—” Eddie squeezes his hands into fists over his lap, restless, and bounces one knee. He flails with his hands and does that choppy thing Richie’s only ever seen Eddie do. “Okay, look, don’t—_don’t_ move, okay?”

Richie blinks owlishly behind his glasses and holds his hands up. But that only seems to rile Eddie up more, and he sighs, big and blustery, and throws his hands. 

And then he rocks Richie’s world and says, “I wanna jump you so fucking bad, Rich.”

Richie opens his mouth, and no sound comes out. Eddie’s face gets even redder.

“Oh, God.” He covers his face with his hands. “Look, it’s not even—it’s not that it’s just that, or about that. But I’m… and we—well, you know.”

“So all those years ago when you asked for a lick on my rocket—”

“Again with your fucking rocket?” Eddie snaps, still very fucking red.

Because that was absolutely one of the first things Richie teased him about at the restaurant that first night. Back when they were pretending, what? That they didn’t both feel the same? That they didn’t always?

“And when you said we should take off our shirts and kiss—”

“Jesus, I’m sorry I said anything!”

“No, Eds, please,” Richie croons, grinning his widest shit-eating grin. “I wanna hear all about it.”

“Oh, fuck you! I just don’t want…” He sighs again and lets his shoulders sag like he’s a balloon with all the air gone out. “This can’t be it, all right? I can’t take it if I lose you again. And I’ve wanted to kiss you forever, okay, asshole? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Richie barks a laugh, touched and giddy and completely enamoured with the frowny, pouty man in front of him. He points at his own face and says, “Hey, is this the face I keep making?”

Eddie looks at him, almost does a double take, and holds right there, staring the full proof of Richie’s stupid heart eyes head on. The corner of his mouth twitches and spreads slowly into a smile. He scoffs and shakes his head, looking away but swinging his gaze back like he can’t help it. Richie can appreciate that. He’s felt the same kinda way lately.

“You’re such a dickhead,” Eddie mutters, smiling.

And that’s okay, too, because Richie hears what he’s really saying. So he answers in kind.

“I love you, too, fuckface.”

Eddie laughs hard enough to wince at the pain in his cheek. Richie watches him for any signs of something serious, if the wound’s pulled open or hurting worse than before, but Eddie smiles again once the pain subsides.

Richie reaches up and tangles his fingers with Eddie’s. 

“So what’s next? East Coast, West Coast?”

“East Coast,” Eddie answers decisively enough. He squeezes Richie’s hand. “I need to see Myra.”

“Okay.”

“And—” Eddie looks intently at Richie. “You can… Well, if you want, I don’t know…”

“Do you want me to?” Richie asks.

Eddie nods.

“Then I’ll be there.”

Eddie nods again, looking relieved but a little hazy. Richie’s about to ask if his cheek hurts still when Eddie leans forward and presses his forehead against Richie’s, eyes slipping closed. He smells like the sky when it’s about to rain. 

Richie holds himself very still, or he tries to. One of them moves, or they both do, and their noses are slip-sliding against each other. His heart pounds and his mouth drops open, but he doesn’t push forward and kiss Eddie like he wants to. Doesn’t know how to ask for that yet because so far it’s always been Eddie kissing him. Always Eddie dictating the pace and what’s far enough and what he wants more of. Richie’s very careful to keep an eye on that line. He wants Eddie—wants him _yesterday_, but not if it costs Eddie something he isn’t willing to part with.

“Eddie,” he mouths, feeling how close they are and much closer they can still get. 

“Richie.”

It would be so easy to angle his mouth over Eddie’s. So easy to press his thumb to Eddie’s chin and lick his way in. It would be so easy and it would feel so right, and Richie _wants_ him. He wants him.

But he doesn’t trust himself to stop if he gets what he wants now, after wanting it so badly for as long as he has. And maybe waiting just a little while longer, until they don’t need to worry about stopping, won’t be the worst thing. Richie’s still working on separating _love_ from _wrong_ and _bad_ in his mind. He doesn’t need to add _hurting someone else_ to that list before he’s fully managed to strike the others from it.

So he swallows hard and says, as unsexily as possible, “My knees are killing me.”

Eddie sputters a laugh, and Richie groans comically loud, twisting toward the bathtub so he can use the edge of it to stand. Sure enough, both his knees _and_ his ankles pop. Eddie stands up, too, dark eyes glittering with laughter.

“Not a word outta you, Kaspbrak.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he protests, but his smirk is Bad News through and through. Somehow Richie’s still not prepared when he says, in a voice like melted sugar, “You looked really good on your knees for me, though, Rich.”

“Beep, motherfucking beep, Eddie,” Richie wheezes, grinning like a moron and blushing like a virgin.

Eddie grins back at him, tongue pressed between his teeth like a sweet, forbidden treat, and breezes out of the bathroom. He glances back at Richie once before he’s opened the door to the hallway, but from there, he trusts Richie to stay hot on his heels as they stomp downstairs together.


	5. Love You, I Love You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She leans over and kisses Richie on the cheek, and so does Ben. He feels so safe between the two of them, all Bev’s fire and all Ben’s kindness creating the perfect shelter against the world. Richie realizes they’re getting attention from their friends across the way and points from his eyes to Bill and Mike, collectively, saying:
> 
> “I’m gonna need you guys to step up your friendship game.”
> 
> “Come put your money where your mouth is,” Bill teases, sealing his stupid red lips around his beer.

Before they’ve even gotten eyes on him, Eddie calls out, “Hey Mike, you still want that pizza?”

Mike looks up from the other side of the bar once they come into view on the bottom landing. Bill tosses back the shot in front of him and digs his wallet out of his back pocket.

“I’m buying.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice,” Richie says, crossing to him and plucking the credit card out of Bill’s waiting fingers. “Pizza and beer, right? Wings?”

“Yeah?” Bill looks over his shoulder at Mike, then back at Richie. “Thanks, guys.”

“You’re buying, man. Call it in, Mike?”

“Gotcha covered,” Mike says, already reaching for the hotel phone, which makes Richie laugh for some reason.

Eddie rolls his eyes and grabs Richie’s hand to tow him out the door. Richie goes with him, thoroughly enjoying their height difference and how the last few hours have only gone towards making Eddie even bossier than usual. He glances behind him at Bill and Mike while Eddie’s marching him outside.

“Now you guys gotta make out!”

“Richie!”

But Bill and Mike are both laughing when the door swings shut behind them.

Richie palms his pocket for his keys, contorting to try and reach them since they’re on the wrong side for the hand he has free. Eddie notices and releases him, and it’s not what Richie wanted, but it does let him dig around adequately for his keys. He thumbs the button on the key fob without pressing it and pauses. The sunset’s hitting the parking lot just right to cast Eddie in a reddish glow that makes him look like he’s backlit by fire.

“Goddamn,” Richie says.

And because it’s Eddie, he rolls his eyes and snaps, “I’m fucking starving, dumbass. Unlock the car.”

“But you’re just so _cute,_ Eds! Cute, cute, cute! I can’t help it.”

“Richie, I swear to God,” he hisses like the feral hobgoblin boy Richie remembers. His face and ears are red. “Open the door!”

Richie does open the door, then he gets in and starts the car. He’s fucking starving, too.

Eddie grabs his hand once he pulls out onto the street, and Richie, by the grace of some higher power or the spirit of Adrian Mellon himself, doesn’t swerve off the road or into pedestrians. He just sinks back into his seat and smiles, holding Eddie’s hand in his while he steers with the other.

“Okay, I take it back. Your technique’s pretty fucking flawless.”

“Thanks,” Eddie muses, not surprised but evidently very fucking proud of himself all the same.

They break apart to go into the corner store for beer and again when they pick up the food. Richie’s sorely tempted to tear into it right there in the car because he’s goddamn ravenous by then, but Eddie slaps his wandering hands away every time he tries his luck.

It’s dark when they get back to the hotel, and by then Bev and Ben have rejoined the party. There’s no way to tell if Bill and Mike took Richie’s sage advice to heart, but it’d be cool if they did. Or maybe not, actually, since Bill’s married, too. Weird how exactly half of them, with Stan tipping the scale, went and got hitched. Even weirder how the way they’re paired off now leaves one married and one not. What are the odds of that? Another trick of the universe keeping them away from each other?

“Bring it in here!” Bill calls out, waving them into the dining room.

Richie has the beer and Eddie has the food. They set it all out on the table as directed, and Richie lets Eddie drag him away to wash up while everyone figures out plates and seats and the like. 

Eddie washes his hands first and dries off while Richie runs his hands under the tap. The pressure in his chest from earlier has lifted, and now when he looks at Eddie he only feels warm. They’re just in the downstairs bathroom, the two of them bathed in the light from the hall. Their friends are close enough that Richie can hear every word they’re saying. Close enough that the sound of opening pizza boxes makes his mouth water. He’s not expecting it when Eddie tugs him down by his shirt collar and kisses Richie full on the mouth.

The towel Richie was drying his hands with flutters to the floor. He makes a noise against Eddie’s teeth and turns just enough to break the kiss.

“Sorry,” Eddie sighs, and he sounds it, even though he kisses Richie again on the edge of his mouth. “Jeez, sorry.”

Richie makes another sound and laughs, delirious, torn. He bites his lip and holds his breath, mind racing and heart flying even faster than that. He clutches the back of Eddie’s shirt in his hand, trying to get a grip. Christ, they can’t.

They shouldn’t, but God, Eddie’s right there. He’s right there and his lip is all shiny from Richie’s spit, and Richie’s ready to turn his head and kiss Eddie himself for the first time when it hits him.

_“Diaphanous,”_ he says in a long, heavy exhale.

He feels Eddie blink. Then, “What?”

“I’ve been trying to think of that word all damn day.”

Eddie scrunches up his forehead, but he doesn’t say any of the things Richie would expect him to say. He just backs up a little, and so does Richie. Richie still wants to kiss him, but there’s no urgency to it now that he went and poked a hole in the mood. And that’s good, he thinks. He needs to be able to think clearly about this.

“C’mon, Eds,” Richie says, still sounding ridiculously hoarse. “Our first kiss was already in the sewer. You want mine with you to happen in a bathroom?”

Eddie actually looks embarrassed, though he doesn’t try to back out of it. He surprises Richie by saying, “Sorry, Rich.”

“That’s okay. I’m _very_ kissable, after all.”

“Ugh.”

“Some might say _irresistible_.”

“You’re the bane of my existence is what you are,” Eddie says, walking out of the bathroom. 

“There better still be pizza out there!” Richie yells, picking the towel up from off the floor and tossing it in the sink. He jogs out into the hallway and swings around the doorframe into the dining room. There is, in fact, plenty of pizza left. “Oh, hell yeah.”

Bev waves a plate in the air and says, “Come sit by me, Richie.”

“Over here, Eddie.” Bill holds out a plate to Eddie and gestures at the seat to his left. “Veggie or pepperoni?”

Richie tunes out the rest of their exchange to fill his plate. He demolishes a slice and cracks open a beer, then leans over to Bev, whispering, “Did you guys set it up like this so we wouldn’t make out in front of everyone?”

“Oh, please, you already made out in front of everyone,” Bev retorts, poking his cheek with a celery stick. She does actually lower her voice to add, “Bill wanted to sit next to Eddie.”

He glances across the table at them. Eddie’s shoving a slice of pizza into his face with a hilariously vacant but determined expression of hunger, and Bill’s working on a chicken wing. He’s waving it at Mike for emphasis, trying to do the work of speaking with his food and facial expressions while his mouth is full. His free hand is on Eddie’s opposite shoulder, the length of his arm resting across Eddie’s back. 

Richie wonders if Bill feels bad for yelling at Eddie over the whole spider-Stan incident. Bill’s struggled with guilt more than any of them, and they almost lost Eddie down there. If they had, the last thing he might’ve said to Bill, really, could have been, _Please don’t be mad at me, Bill. _

A shiver works its way down Richie’s back.

Ben returns to the table then, and Richie didn’t know where he disappeared to, but the roll of paper towels he’s wielding answers the question for him. He sits on Richie’s other side with a little sigh and places the roll in the center of the table where Mike immediately tears off a sheet and uses it to dab a spot high up on Bill’s cheek. Everybody laughs but Ben, presumably because he noticed Richie slipping casually into a panic attack as soon as he sat down. 

Without saying anything, he stretches one arm around Richie’s back and rubs both his arms like Richie’s a kid who turned up at school without a jacket. Like he’s trying to fight back the cold with his bare hands.

“Okay, Rich?” Ben asks.

Richie nods stiffly, and then Bev’s hand is in his hair, fingers combing through it and grounding him. He nods again, and says, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

She leans over and kisses Richie on the cheek, and so does Ben. He feels so safe between the two of them, all Bev’s fire and all Ben’s kindness creating the perfect shelter against the world. Richie realizes they’re getting attention from their friends across the way and points from his eyes to Bill and Mike, collectively, saying:

“I’m gonna need you guys to step up your friendship game.”

“Come put your money where your mouth is,” Bill teases, sealing his stupid red lips around his beer.

Eddie’s shaking his head, a dubious _What an idiot, but he’s my idiot_ kind of look on his face that Richie loves immensely. On the other side of Bill, Mike balls up the paper towel he used to clean his hands and gets to his feet.

“I’ll kiss you, Richie.”

And he does, right in the center of Richie’s forehead like he’s a mom reading him a bedtime story or something. Richie giggles. It’s the only suitable response. 

“Ball’s in your court, Billy boy!”

“Like I said, Rich.” Bill holds his arms wide open, eased back in his chair and draped over Eddie a little bit where they’ve started to lean on each other. “Come and get it. Unless you’re too chicken.”

“Are you gonna let him talk to you like that?” Bev asks, pink-cheeked and obviously having a blast.

Richie doesn’t know what’s happening, but he doesn’t hate it. He also doesn’t hate the intense, heated look Eddie gives him as he bursts out of his seat and rounds the table. 

Bill tips his head back, and maybe it’s that he’s gotten his confidence back in spades now that he’s finally lost his stutter for good or maybe it’s just because this is how they’ve always seen Bill, but he looks so fucking cool right in this moment. All soft blue eyes and an easy smile curving his mouth and holding one hand out to Richie like, _Bring it on, Trashmouth. _

“You’re such a badass,” Richie mumbles, entirely by accident.

Whatever. It just means their audience has something to laugh at. Well, not Eddie. He’s got his chin on Bill’s shoulder all geared up to watch, but he hasn’t said a word. Maybe he’s trying to give him this. Richie never told any of them about that summer Lisa Carmichael dared him to kiss Drew Hanover and it flipped his whole world upside down, but they must know the way they already knew the other thing. 

So Richie leans in and kisses Bill Denbrough right on the fucking lips, and when his stomach swoops it’s not in fear. It’s in exhilaration. 

“Holy shit!” he yells, when it hasn’t even been one whole _Mississippi. _

It gets drowned out a bit between Bev and Ben’s catcalls and Mike’s wolf whistle. At a break in the noise, Bill cuts a wicked glance from Bev to Richie and says:

“Like you mean it, Richie.”

“What—”

Then Bill’s pulling him back down, and Eddie’s gasping, saying, “Holy _shit_.”

Holy shit is right because that’s definitely Bill’s tongue in Richie’s mouth. And listen, Richie will deny it if asked, but he’s always, just a little bit, wanted to kiss Bill. Because Bill’s fucking _cool_ and always has been, okay? Sue him. Richie relaxes into it and kisses him back. Why not? Bill asked for it, and everyone else is _still_ egging them on.

Richie’s got barely a neck of beer in his belly and has no real excuse for being so breathless and red in the face when Bill finally pulls away. He also has no excuse for the muzzy, heavy-lidded glance he slides over Bill’s shoulder at Eddie. And neither has Eddie, for the burning look he’s giving Richie in return.

Grinning and falling into Mike’s chair, Richie mutters, “Jesus Christ, Bill.”

He shrugs, and under his breath where only Richie and Eddie can hear from beneath everyone else’s raucous laughter, he says, “Always wondered what that’d be like.” 

Eddie spits beer all over his pizza and reaches across Bill to point at Richie’s face.

“Do _not_ kiss him again. No offense, Bill.”

Bill just laughs and ruffles Eddie’s hair. Richie grabs a chicken wing and dips it in ranch. He looks across the table to see Mike in his seat finishing his pizza. They eat their fill of the food, and afterwards, when Richie’s laughed so hard his stomach hurts, he finds himself turning to the empty chair at the head of the table. He digs around in the box on the table for another beer, cracks it open, and pushes it over. Everyone else gets quiet.

“To Stan?” he asks, raising his beer.

“To Stan,” Bill says, clinking his bottle against Richie’s and then against Ben’s when he extends it to the middle of the table.

He says, “To Stan.”

Bev clinks with him and Bill and Richie, and echoes the toast: “To Stan.”

Mike and Eddie bring their bottles up, too.

“Stan the Man,” Mike says, smiling.

“Yeah,” Eddie chimes in. “He was.”

Whatever Stan thought or felt right at the end, Richie hopes to God he knew how much they loved him. How much they still do.

They drink and talk and give each other shit, and by the time they’re all ready to turn in, Richie feels like he could sleep for a year. He’s not thinking about it when he walks to Eddie’s room, not until Eddie grabs his wrist and points with his thumb at Richie’s room. Probably because of the whole getting-stabbed thing. That makes sense.

“You better not get grabby,” Richie yawns, turning the handle.

“Fuck off.” 

“Ooh.” He yawns again, voice pitching higher. “Such a charmer.”

Eddie bustles around doing sensible things like taking off his shoes and putting them side by side at the foot of the bed. Richie sort of half watches him take off his sweater and drape it over the one armchair in the room. He leaves for a minute to get dressed and comes back with a toothbrush in his mouth. After rooting around in Richie’s bag and not finding what he’s looking for, Eddie ducks into the ensuite. He emerges with toothpaste on his chin and tosses Richie’s toothbrush on the bed next to him.

“Don’t be gross, Rich.”

Richie groans but doesn’t move. He closes his eyes and listens to Eddie brush his teeth, run the tap, and walk back into the room.

Eddie Kaspbrak, freshly dressed and groomed, looks down at the rumpled mess that is Richie Tozier spilled over the unmade bed and asks, “Aren’t you gonna get ready for bed?”

Richie, lying on top of the blankets with his face smushed into the pillow, kicks off one shoe.

“Ready,” he says.

“For fuck’s sake,” Eddie huffs. “Fine then.”

He climbs in under the blanket on the other side of the bed. It’s not big enough for two grown men and they didn’t even talk about it beforehand, but it’s not like Richie’s gonna send Eddie back to his room or suggest that one of them take the floor. He sighs, kicks off his other shoe, and rolls off over the edge of the bed with his toothbrush in hand. By the time he comes back to bed, Eddie’s passed out or doing a good job pretending to be. 

Richie touches the collar of his shirt to pull it off but hesitates. He doesn’t think that’ll go over well when they wake up eight hours from now mashed together on an itty bitty bed. The jeans and socks come off, but he leaves his shirt on and turns out the light.

Eddie snuffles at the shifting mattress and rubs at his forehead. He mumbles, “Hey, Rich?”

“Yeah, Eds?”

But Eddie doesn’t say anything. He just inches forward and wraps Richie up in his arms before nodding off again.

His heart beats fast then slow. When he tucks his face into Eddie’s hair and breathes him in, he still smells like rain and an open endless sky. Richie wants to hold onto him and never let go. He drops a kiss to Eddie’s temple and closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill: fellas, is it gay to make out with your best friend over pizza and beer after you kill a sewer clown together


	6. No Doubt in My Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bev’s going with Ben, Mike’s on his way to pack up his loft, and Bill’s on the phone with his wife saying he’ll be on the first flight back to L.A. Eddie wonders if he’s going to tell her about making out with Richie last night because if so, he’d love to be a fly on the wall for _that_ conversation. He’s not looking forward to doing it with Myra, but that’s a different story. 
> 
> They start a group chat and exchange addresses just to be safe. None of them want to forget each other this time around.

Eddie wakes with the pulse in Richie's neck pressed firmly against his forehead. He’s warm, warm, warm, and cozy. Both Richie’s arms are around him, and the one Eddie’s lying on is most definitely all pins and needles by now.

He lets himself have this. Lets himself sink into it and close his eyes so that he’s surrounded by all things Richie—how soft the skin at his throat is, how steady and strong the lull of his heartbeat feels, how his arms tighten around Eddie for just a moment as he’s waking up. Eddie levers himself up a bit when Richie predictably fumbles to free his arm from underneath him.

“Ow,” he grumbles, twisting onto his back and flopping his dead arm over his chest.

It’s too easy to reach for Richie’s limp hand and knead it between both of his. Eddie moves onto his back, too, and works the life back into Richie’s hand. Eventually, when Richie regains full sensation, he turns his hand right there on Eddie’s chest to lace their fingers together.

He can remember when they were kids and they’d lie in the grass like this, out of breath from wrestling and scream-laughing in the summer heat. They always had to be touching back then, whether that meant hanging off each other in the water or crawling all over one another in the Barrens, that’s how it was. That’s how it always was.

“Morning,” Richie says, jaw cracking around a yawn.

Eddie looks over at him. The sun coming in through the window on his side of the room lights up Richie’s profile and makes his dark hair shine copper at the edges. He took off his glasses to sleep, so Eddie’s free to look at him as much as he wants. There’s several days’ worth of stubble on him and bags under his eyes. His hair’s a mess, just like his room was when Eddie followed him into it last night.

He can see what Bev meant when she told Richie he’d grow into his features. Eddie thinks that if he’d been the one to see what they were gonna look like as adults, he would’ve told Richie—okay, he would’ve given him shit and not said what he meant, but he knows himself now and he knows who he was twenty-seven years ago, so—

Well, anyway, he’s always liked looking at Richie. He would’ve liked to know back then that that wasn’t something that was ever gonna change. It might have helped him realize some important shit much earlier in life. Might’ve helped him to act on it sooner.

Richie paws at the nightstand for his glasses. He gets them on and twists back onto his side facing Eddie.

“You okay, Eds?”

He hums, still holding Richie’s hand to his chest and watching him while his heart trips and his mind works. Richie seems to notice then where his hand is because he looks down, closes his eyes, and breathes out a long, uneven sigh.

“Are you ever gonna tell us what you saw down there?”

“Are you gonna let it go if I don’t?” Richie asks tonelessly, with a completely neutral expression.

“Yeah, if you want me to. Do you?”

Richie swallows and opens his eyes, but he keeps them trained on their hands. Eddie presses them closer to his heartbeat and watches, enthralled, when Richie shivers and presses his lips together. He closes his eyes again, rubbing at one eye under the cracked lens with two fingers.

In a small voice that makes Eddie want to cry, Richie says, “I don’t want to talk about it, Eddie.”

“Okay. Hey, it’s okay.”

Eddie thinks he might cry, actually. He’s worried he’ll upset Richie more if he does, so he lifts his chin and pulls him closer. Normally it’d be harder to get him to move, but Richie’s pliant and he goes easily. He rests his cheek where their hands were, right over Eddie’s heart, and they don’t say anything. His hair is soft when Eddie runs his fingers through it. The right side’s all smushed from where he slept on it.

Outside the birds sing and a dog barks—life going back to normal, resetting. He imagines the magic lifting like a spiderweb getting swept away from an old picture.

What was that word Richie said he couldn’t think of? Diaphanous?

He wonders how ten dollar words like that’ll fit into Richie’s new material going forward. Wonders if he’ll work them in deliberately as part of an ironic commentary or if he’ll save the best of them for hecklers and critics. Definitely not anything subtle, though. Eddie’s fairly certain about that.

A lot has changed since the last time they came together, but not that. Not all his old favorite things about Richie. Or about any of them.

“I’ll tell you someday,” Richie says unbidden into Eddie’s shirt.

“Okay, Rich.”

“Will you tell me something?”

“Yeah, what?”

He takes his glasses off, rubs at his eyes, and replaces them before looking up at Eddie. His chin’s propped on Eddie’s chest, a few rogue tears smeared across one cheek. When he speaks again, it’s still in that same small voice from before.

“What are you gonna tell your wife when we get to New York?”

“The truth, I guess,” Eddie mumbles, without thinking.

“Which is?”

“That I—” Eddie looks away, uselessly, out of habit. There’s nowhere to go unless he pushes Richie off of him and he’s not doing that. He’s tired of running from things that scare him. It’s never been a permanent solution in the past. “That I’m sorry and I don’t want to hurt her. That I never wanted to hurt her, y’know, but… if I stay with her, I’ll be hurting myself, and so will she. Not that Myra will see it that way.”

He thumbs the few tears Richie missed, and Richie blinks at him, eyebrows furrowed.

“Okay,” he says, but Eddie can tell he’s waiting for more.

“And uh, also,” Eddie hedges, blushing when Richie’s eyes light up. “Also that I’m in love with someone else.”

They stare at each other with the sunlight streaming in all around them, and Eddie feels something in his chest come unscrewed. He lets it go, and that overflowing sensation spills and spills like so many genies rushing out of one bottle. All at once he remembers that last day in the Barrens with Richie’s blood on his cast, how it matched the bright red ‘V’ that turned a bleak wound into a victory. He wishes he’d seen it then, and that he hadn’t been afraid of it.

“Yeah,” he says, blinking and spilling over so much it’s a wonder none of it’s getting on Richie. “That’s what I’ll tell her.”

Richie pushes up onto his elbows and rests his chin in his hand. He worries his lip with his teeth and searches Eddie’s face like he’s looking for something he doesn’t know the name for. Then he breathes out slowly and says, “Are you leaving her because of me?”

“No, Rich, it’s… Myra’s… I’m leaving her because… she’s my mother.”

He glances away, uncomfortable, braced for the punchline Richie’s been poised to make every time it comes up in conversation. But he doesn’t say anything, and when Eddie looks at him again, he’s still got that look on his face like he’s trying to understand, even if he isn’t sure he’ll like the answer he gets. So Eddie drops his head back, takes a breath, and tries to find the clearest path to what he most needs Richie to hear.

“You know when I was a kid, um, I remember, uh—” Eddie stops, throat suddenly tightening and eyes stinging. “I remember a time when… I didn’t feel sick. I remember it!” A strangled laugh escapes him. “Isn’t that fucked up? Before Bowers, before Pennywise. I remember just… there were swingsets and a big yellow slide and monkey bars and all this, just, sand and grass everywhere. And I was running, Richie.”

He laughs at the memory, at how clear it is. Parts of it are murky, but the sunshine and the grass and the shrill laughter of the other kids his age stand out in his mind.

“I was running so fast I thought I could _fly_, and my mother… you know how she was.”

“She freak out?” Richie asks, hushed.

“Oh, yeah. She came rushing over, shrieking about how my lungs weren’t strong enough and I was gonna fall and get hurt or catch something. That someone might grab me and walk off with me if she couldn’t—if she couldn’t see me. She carried me the whole way home, and everybody just watched. Then she made me go to bed in the middle of the day so I wouldn’t get heat exhaustion. After that she never took me back. Not to that playground or any playground, not ever.”

“Jesus.”

“It scared me, how she used to get. But then I… couldn’t get out from under it. And she always thought she could fix whatever was wrong with me, even when there wasn’t anything wrong. My fucking—my aspirator filled with sugar water or those bullshit pills she put me on… and Myra’s the same. She’s exactly the same, which is what I wanted! It’s not her fault she’s like that. I enabled her this whole time. I wanted her to control me, I wanted her to hold me back, and I didn’t want to do the _work_ of… finding out who I am when I’m not leaning on someone else.

“I chose that, I know I did. But I can’t go back now. I can’t be that anymore. Not for her. I don’t want to be weak so someone else can feel strong.”

Richie stays quiet. His expression is stony and unreadable.

“It sucked when I broke my arm. It sucked when that mullet-wearing asshole stabbed me in the face. It sucked both times we went after that shitbag sewer clown. All of it sucked, but _I fought back_.” Eddie wipes at his eyes and clears his throat. It doesn’t help. He wipes at his eyes again, and his hand comes back wet. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t want me to fight back.”

There’s something else on the tip of Eddie’s tongue. Something he thought a million years ago and that he’s never said out loud to anyone. He swallows down his fear and says it:

“There’s more to life than just pain and being afraid of it.” He wipes at his face again, looking away. “But it’s necessary, right? It’s like, how you learn to get up by falling down. Or you… learn to be brave by being scared shitless—”

He’s still looking away when Richie leans up and kisses him right on the mouth, soft but deliberate and perfectly unyielding. Eddie carefully turns his head and kisses him back. It’s a sweet kiss, and it gives Eddie butterflies like he can hardly believe. The morning breath is real, but so is the rest of it: that Richie knows him and loves him, and that Eddie knows and loves him, too. They have a chance now. There’s more work to be done and more hurdles to overcome, but it’s not a source of anxiety or dread for him like it once was.

“What’d I say?” Richie asks, kissing Eddie’s cheek.

“Huh?”

“About you. Always knew how brave you were, Eds. I’m sorry you weren’t allowed to be.”

Eddie smiles and doesn’t feel at all like crying.

Richie pulls away, murmuring, “Still can’t believe you married a woman, though.”

“It was bound to happen to one of us,” Eddie snipes back, too breathless to sound appropriately annoyed. He can’t help it. He likes kissing Richie and how it makes his heart beat faster. “That’s just math, Richie.”

“Not for me,” Richie groans, flopping over onto his back with a big stretch. Several pops sound out from the general vicinity of his shoulders, and then he groans again, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “You got that I’m gay, right?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, secretly loving the easy, confident way Richie can say it, after all that time being too afraid to tell even them. 

“You want the first shower?” Richie asks, rolling off the bed to look for a change of clothes.

“No, you go ahead.”

They get cleaned up, dressed, and make the rounds loading their belongings into their suitcases. Downstairs everyone else is getting ready to head out, too.

Bev’s going with Ben, Mike’s on his way to pack up his loft, and Bill’s on the phone with his wife saying he’ll be on the first flight back to L.A. Eddie wonders if he’s going to tell her about making out with Richie last night because if so, he’d love to be a fly on the wall for _that_ conversation. He’s not looking forward to doing it with Myra, but that’s a different story. 

They start a group chat and exchange addresses just to be safe. None of them want to forget each other this time around.

Text alerts start coming in right away.

First it’s a few pictures Richie snapped that first night at the restaurant: shots of Ben and Eddie laughing, and Bev wearing Richie’s glasses, and Bill pointing at Mike, both of them with matching grins. Then there are artistic candids Mike took of everyone. Faceless shots and some that are out of focus. Eddie picks out his favorites and sets them as contact photos.

Ben sends a hilarious one that looks like it was taken while Eddie and Richie were out picking up dinner. It’s him in the foreground smiling sweetly and Bill slightly out of focus dangling what looks to be a maraschino cherry between his teeth at the bar. In the exact moment that Ben took the picture Mike flicked the cherry right at Bill’s nose.

Bill walks up and catches Eddie zooming in on his oblivious face. He laughs as he’s hugging him goodbye.

“I think I want that picture on the sleeve for my next book.”

Eddie laughs, too, but then stops and looks down. “What the fuck,” he says. “Are you shorter than me?”

“I can’t believe you only just noticed.” 

Bill still manages to plant a kiss on Eddie’s temple, though, and he must notice Eddie wondering about it because he does it again and says, “You gotta stop hunching your shoulders, Eddie.”

After Bill heads out, Bev and Ben go out and load all their stuff into his car. Mike helps Richie and Eddie do the same with all of Eddie’s extra suitcases. Ben’s helping Mike squash them down in the trunk of Richie’s mustang, and Richie’s bent in half to hug Bev. She’s saying something to him that Eddie can’t hear, but he has no time to guess at what it is because then she’s letting go of Richie and turning to hug Eddie.

“Take care of each other,” she says, kissing the side of his face that didn’t get stabbed and reeling him back in to keep hugging him. “And be good.”

“You, too, Bevvie.”

She pulls away with another kiss for him and holds his face, careful to mind his cheek. Eddie smiles and keeps smiling after Mike sweeps her off her feet to swing her around in a hug. Ben’s on Eddie next, hugging him and Richie under one arm each. Richie pretends to swoon, and Eddie just laughs. Richie breaks away to hug Mike when he lets go of Bev, and that leaves Ben holding onto Eddie.

“Call us if you need anything, and text us every day.”

“We will, Ben.”

Richie calls out, “You better send dog pictures, though.”

Eddie hugs Mike after that and asks where he’s headed after his stop at the library.

“Somewhere warm?” he says, then hums. “Somewhere with a beach and water that you can’t see the end of.”

“Come boating with us,” Ben offers, an arm around Bev. “You guys, too.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Mike promises with a wide smile. “What about you, Eddie? You’re going with Richie, right?”

“Uh, yeah. I gotta return the car first, though.”

“I still say you should just leave it here. They’ll figure it out.”

“That’s not how it works, Richie.”

With a few more parting words and lingering hugs, they’re piling into their cars and out onto the street to go their own way again. Eddie’s with Richie—he persuaded him to go run a quick errand with him before Eddie goes to return the rental in the nearest big city. He fiddles with the radio and watches the scenery pass while Richie drives, grateful that they’ll be out of Derry soon. For a minute there it started to feel like they might never leave.

He spares a thought for Stan and wishes they’d gotten to see him again. What would he have been doing in the pictures Eddie’s scrolling through? Put his arm around Bill and stuck his tongue out at the camera? Crept up behind Ben in the middle of his sneaky selfie and goosed him? Sat in between Richie and Eddie so he could moderate their bickering just like old times?

There didn’t need to be a sacrifice. They could’ve all made it.

He looks up at a turn in the road and realizes where they’re going only a few seconds before the Kissing Bridge comes into view. Richie parks where the road ends, checks his mirror, and opens his door.

“Be right back, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“For the record, that’s the worst one. All your names for me are shitty, but that one sucks the most.” 

Richie shuts his door and leans down so he’s got his arms folded over his open window. He flashes Eddie a shit-eating grin and _purrs_, “Is that why you’ve been complaining about ‘em so much lately?”

Eddie blinks and then rolls his eyes to distract from how red he can feel himself getting. He fidgets with his hands briefly and then cuts the air over the center console with the one closest to Richie, saying, “Just do your fucking errand, you weirdo.”

“Goddamn, you’re cute,” Richie answers good-naturedly and walks toward the bridge with a bounce in his step.

Eddie sighs, flustered, and fights with his seatbelt. He shifts restlessly against the stupid leather upholstery and watches Richie kneel in front of the railing with a pocket knife in one hand.

“The fuck?” He gets out of the car and goes to investigate. “This is your big errand?”

“Wow, you really can’t sit still for more than ten seconds at a time, can ya, Eds?” Richie teases, fondly, the way he always says this shit to Eddie.

“Don’t call me that,” he snaps because apparently he’s been forgetting to say it out loud. He looks at where Richie’s dusting his fingers over the stark ‘R’ carved into the wood. “What did you…”

Because then he sees it, tucked up on the other side of a faint plus sign like the natural complement to a math problem. _R+E. _

“Richie,” Eddie breathes, starstruck even though he shouldn’t be.

Richie told him, didn’t he? Told him he’s crazy about Eddie, and that he has been since forever. Eddie knew that, and it’s not as if he didn’t trust Richie when he told him or like he needed proof somehow that Richie meant it, but here it is anyway. Emblazoned on the Kissing Bridge with all the other lovers and losers Derry’s seen come and go, are Richie and Eddie.

_R+E. _

“Sorry it’s not fuckin’, y’know, January embers or whatever,” Richie says, not actually looking or sounding even a little bit sorry. 

“You’re such a dumbass,” Eddie mutters, but his eyes are stinging and his face is on fire. He pats his pocket for an aspirator that isn’t there. “You’re gonna—give yourself—a splinter.”

Gently, Richie tells him, “You threw it in the fire, Eddie.”

“I know,” he gasps, dropping his hands. “I know.”

Kneeling and looking up all that way at Eddie really is a fantastic look on Richie. With his wide eyes gone all soft and the long line of his throat exposed, his mouth is just begging to be kissed. Or maybe Eddie’s just been waiting for the excuse. Not that he needs one anymore, not now that this is a thing shared between them.

So Eddie kneels in front of Richie and kisses him. Lets himself imagine a future stretching out ahead of them. They’ve got their whole lives left, and Eddie can’t wait. He’s so excited to be there at Richie’s side every step of the way. 

“Hey, let me see that.”

Richie hands Eddie the knife with the blade tucked safely away. He pops it open and finishes carving their initials deeper into the wood. It feels good to have seen it and left it different than he found it. Beside him Richie’s practically shaking. He’s got one hand over his mouth and the other on the railing like he might fall otherwise. Eddie helps him back up onto his feet and pulls him into a hug.

He holds on tight. Even if Richie hasn’t told him yet, Eddie knows how close they came to never having this.

And what decided that they should get to have it? Eddie presses a kiss over Richie’s heart and knows that that’s the answer. It’s what stopped the clown when the monster killer didn’t take. The warmth and safety and total acceptance that he feels in Richie’s arms, how it comes off him and sinks back in on an endless feedback loop, protected them. It swathed them in something so impenetrable that no weapon of fear, no matter how terrible, could pierce it.

“Now take me back to my car,” Eddie murmurs, nudging Richie back just enough to look up at him. “So we can go home already.”

Richie tucking his chin to look Eddie in the eyes is another good look on him. If he didn’t love him so goddamn much, Eddie might hate him for it. But in the way he always pretended to be so put out or impatient with Richie. In the way where they’d argue and push each other and Richie would do a voice and Eddie would roll his eyes… 

“Home sounds good, Eds.”

They take one last look at their initials carved on the bridge. Eddie takes a picture, wanting to be able to revisit this portal back into their childhood without having to physically return to it. He doesn’t ever want to come back to Derry, and he doesn’t want Richie or their friends to either.

Wherever they make their home after this, they’ll be together. It’s all any of them ever really needed to beat the devil and defeat their demons in the first place. To stick together.

Back in the car, Eddie holds Richie’s hand over the gearshift and closes his eyes.

_Home_, he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Doubt thou the stars are fire;  
Doubt that the sun doth move;  
Doubt truth to be a liar;  
But never doubt I love. _  
—from _Hamlet_ by Billy Shakespeare


End file.
